YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: A double-gated and hill-topping mini-estate in a quiet corner of the Hollywood Hills, owned by car collecting comedian Adam Carolla, has popped up on the open market at $5,299,995, a labyrinthine asking price otherwise understood as $5.3 million. Property records show the cantankerously outspoken radio host and podcasting klieg light — “The Adam Carolla Show” is one of the most downloaded podcasts on the planet — acquired the .62-acre spread at the tippy-top of the historic Hollywood Knolls neighborhood in April 2003 for $1.63 million. Current listing details show the multi-winged Spanish Revival style mini-mansion, originally built in the late 1920s and dubbed Vista del Lago for its panoramic vistas over the Hollywood Reservoir, comes in at a comfortably roomy 5,757-square-feet with five bedrooms and six bathrooms.

A honeycomb-pattern carved wood door set into a shallow arched porch opens to a double-height foyer with well-worn and probably original terra-cotta tile floors, period light fixtures, and a hand-painted ceiling with exposed wood beams. The living room, disconcertingly slathered in a rather bloody shade of red paint, has shiny dark chocolate-colored wood floors, exposed wood beams on the ceiling, a couple of arched casement windows that look out to one of the residence’s two paver-tiled courtyards, and, boozehounds will note, an adjoining bar room. The baronial dining room has a leaded glass bay window the drops all the way to the glossy wood floors along with a custom tiled raised hearth fireplace and an undeniably stunning barrel-vaulted exposed wood ceiling with hand-stenciled beams. The kitchen and adjoining breakfast nook, with its predominantly red, cream and green, Christmas-themed color scheme isn’t likely to win a prestigious design award or be featured on the cover of a high-brow shelter publication — not to mention it will probably be ripped out and replaced by the next owner — but is, none-the-less, fitted and kitted with French doors that provide garden access, a pressed tin ceiling, two-tone cabinetry, slab stone counter tops in an unwise shade of burnt orange, and a complete array of top-grade appliances in candy apple red. Two of the Vista del Lago’s more memorably unusual features include a custom fitted pub room with porthole windows that look into the depths of a swimming pool set into tiled terrace with long views over the Hollywood Reservoir and an attached, two-story structure that houses a sprawling, glass-walled office/den that opens to a wraparound terrace with sweeping views over the San Fernando Valley and sits atop an even more vast, custom-designed ten-car garage with polished concrete floor and adjoining lounge area.

More Dirt

As avid celebrity real estate watchers are well aware, Mister Carolla and his podcaster wife Lynette Paradise Carolla have been staples in the property gossip columns over the last couple of years. In the early fall of 2013, the couple shelled out $2.965 million for a hacienda-style residence on a leafy lane in the affluent suburban community of La Cañada-Flintridge that was listed in July of this year (2015) for $3.495 million and quickly sold for $3.39 million. (It’s right next door, as it turns out, to a Colonial-style residence Vince Vaughn owns and currently has on the market for $5.299 million.) The Carollas previously owned a modestly-sized if not exactly inexpensive spread in the star-favored Point Dume area of Malibu that was acquired in April 2007 for $3.6 million and sold not quite a year ago for the exact same price to alt-rock musician — and Kate Hudson’s former boyfriend and baby daddy, Muse frontman Matt Bellamy.